Publications by authors named "Melissa-Sue John"

Bandura argues that individuals are more likely to engage in social learning when they identify with a social model and when they are motivated or rewarded. Therefore, in the present work, we investigate how these two key factors, perceived similarity and affiliative motivation, influence the extent to which individuals engage in social tuning or align their views with an interaction partner-especially if their partner's attitudes differ from the larger social group. Experiment 1 (170 participants) explored the role of perceived similarity through group membership when needing to work collaboratively with a collaboration partner whose climate change beliefs differed from a larger social group.

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The current research aims to investigate whether perspective taking influences social tuning, or the alignment of one's self-views, explicit attitudes, and/or implicit attitudes with those of an interaction partner. In six different experiments, participants believed they would interact with a partner to complete a task. Prior to this ostensible interaction, participants were given a perspective taking mindset prime, or not, and information about their ostensible interaction partners views.

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People's Belief in a Just World (BJW) plays an important role in coping with misfortune and unfairness. This paper demonstrates that understanding of the BJW concept, and its consequences for behavior, is enhanced if we specify what (or who) the source of justice might be. We introduce a new scale, the 5-Dimensional Belief in a Just Treatment Scale (BJT5), which distinguishes five causal dimensions of BJW (God, Nature, Other People, Self, Chance).

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Two studies (a) explored the role of pervasiveness of discrimination (pervasive vs. rare) in determining targets' responses to discrimination, and (b) examined the extent to which threats to participants' worldview can account, in part, for detrimental effects of pervasive discrimination. As predicted, across both studies, pervasiveness of discrimination moderated the relationship between attributions to prejudice for failure to obtain a job and psychological well-being (depressed affect and state self-esteem).

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